The design—build project will be constructed at the Blue Plains Advanced
Wastewater Treatment Plant in Washington, D.C. The tunnel-dewatering pump
station (TDPS) and the enhanced clarification facility are part of the larger
D.C. Clean Rivers Project, mandated under a federal consent decree between the
U.S., D.C. government, and DC Water, to build tunnels to temporarily store
combined sanitary sewer and stormwater overflows until they can be pumped to
the treatment facility. Currently, stormwater runoff from DC Water’s 1878-km2
(725-mi2) service area can overwhelm the system and treatment
facilities with a diluted mix of stormwater and wastewater, resulting in
potential overflow into the Anacostia and Potomac rivers, as well as Rock
Creek.

Major
project components include construction of a 946,000-m3/d (250-mgd)
TDPS that will pump a diluted mix of stormwater runoff and wastewater to the
new 946,000-m3/d enhanced clarification facility, which will use a
ballasted high-rate clarification process. Treated effluent will be disinfected
before discharge to the Potomac River. The TDPS and enhanced clarification
facility will be expandable to 1.9 million m3/d (500 mgd) in the
future.

The
overall tunnel project for DC Water is expected to be completed by March 2018.

The San Antonio Water System (SAWS) agreed to make significant upgrades to reduce overflows from its
sewer system and pay a $2.6 million civil penalty to resolve alleged Clean
Water Act (CWA) violations stemming from discharges of untreated wastewater.

The U.S. Department of Justice, on behalf of the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), filed a complaint against SAWS. The complaint alleges
that between 2006 and 2012, SAWS had approximately 2200 illegal overflows from
its sanitary sewer system that discharged approximately 87 million L (23
million gal) of untreated wastewater into local waterways in violation of its
CWA discharge permit. EPA said it confirmed these violations during a 2011
field inspection and record review.

As part of the settlement, SAWS will conduct systemwide assessments,
identify and implement remedial measures to address problems that cause or
contribute to illegal discharges found during those assessments, and initiate a
capacity management, operation, and maintenance program to proactively reduce
sanitary sewer overflows. The plan must be fully implemented by calendar year
2025.

In the early years of the consent decree, SAWS will take actions that
will result in reduction of sanitary sewer overflows. In addition, SAWS will
conduct water quality monitoring to identify potential additional sources of
bacterial contamination that could be contributing to impairment of the Upper
San Antonio River.

To come into compliance with CWA, SAWS is expected to spend $1.1 billion.
The State of Texas is a co-plaintiff in this case and will receive half of the
civil penalty.

The Orange County (Calif.) Water District (OCWD) board of directors agreed
to explore a partnership with Poseidon Water (Boston) and study the feasibility
of purchasing up to the full capacity of the drinking water that will be
produced by Poseidon’s proposed 189,000-m3/d (50-mgd) Huntington
Beach (Calif.) Seawater Desalination Project.

OCWD
manages a large groundwater basin that provides water to 19 municipal and
special water districts that serve 2.4 million customers in north and central
Orange County. OCWD operates the Groundwater Replenishment System (GWRS) — the
world’s largest water purification system for potable-water reuse. Operational
since January 2008, GWRS has been able to produce up to 265,000 m3/d
(70 mgd) of water. But the board resolved that without the development of
additional new local water resources, groundwater producers would be forced to
significantly increase the amount of imported water they require.

In May, the board unanimously resolved that it is the district’s policy
to consider and develop a variety of local water resources — including seawater
desalination — to ensure that sufficient water supplies always are available to
the residents and businesses in the service territory.

CDM Smith (Cambridge, Mass.)
was recognized with four awards from the Design–Build Institute of America
(Washington, D.C.) for its 2013 National Design–Build Project Awards (NDBPA)
competition.

A 7600-m3/d (2-mgd) nanofiltration water resource recovery
facility (WRRF) addition for the City of Dania Beach, Fla., won an NDBPA
national award in the water/wastewater category. This new
treatment-process-based expansion complements and integrates with the city’s existing
11,000-m3/d (3-mgd) lime-stabilization WRRF to meet increased
drinking water demands and improve finished water quality.

A stormwater and industrial process wastewater treatment system at the
new Johnson Controls Inc. (Milwaukee) lead-acid battery recycling center in
Florence, S.C., also won an NDBPA national award in the water/wastewater
category. The integrated treatment facility treats process wastewater generated
by the recycling center with chemical pretreatment, clarification, and sand filtration
to meet permit limits for safe discharge to the city sewer system.

The LANXESS high-performance materials compounding plant in Gastonia,
N.C., won an NDBPA honor award in the industrial/process/research facilities
category. The new compounding plant consists of a 3300-m2 (35,000-ft2)
production building and an administration/laboratory building with 930 m2
(10,000 ft2) of high-density raw-materials storage warehousing,
truck loading and unloading facilities, and large material silos.

The Stockton (Calif.) Delta water supply project won a merit award in
the water/wastewater category. The $220 million surface-water supply project,
which provides a supplemental water supply under the city’s first water right,
includes an intake and pump station, 29 km (18 mi) of untreated- and
treated-water pipeline, an ultrafiltration-membrane water treatment plant, and
an administration/operations building that is the city’s first structure to
achieve a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (Washington, D.C.) Gold
rating.

Xylem (White Plains, N.Y.)
won a contract to provide a dissolved-air flotation (DAF) pretreatment system
to help ensure an uninterrupted potable-water supply to Abu Dhabi Emirate and
the east coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The source water in the Gulf
of Oman is subject to harmful algal blooms, sometimes called “red tides,” which
are large concentrations of potentially toxic aquatic microorganisms. Xylem’s
Leopold Clari-DAF® system is more than 95% effective in removing
these microorganisms prior to desalination.

Xylem will develop the new pretreatment DAF system for the Fujairah 1
Independent Water and Power Plant, which is owned by Emirates Sembcorp Water
and Power Co. (Fujairah, UAE), a joint venture between Abu Dhabi (UAE) National
Energy Co., Sembcorp Industries (Singapore), and Abu Dhabi Water and
Electricity Authority. The new system will have a capacity of 136,000 m3/d
(reverse-osmosis output) to accommodate an anticipated 15% increase in the
population by 2016. It will serve both the existing and new seawater
reverse-osmosis plants, which have a combined capacity of 306,760 m3/d
and will be one of the world’s largest operating hybrid desalination plants.

The
Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA)
board of directors extended its partnership with Veolia Water (Paris) to
continue providing interim executive management services through December 2014.
The extension builds on the successes and momentum established during the
initial term of the contract and supports the board’s goal to become the
regionally recognized expert on water quality, utility management, and
stakeholder responsiveness.

During the partnership’s first year, a team of water and wastewater
experts from Veolia helped PWSA improve the utility’s customer service and
performance levels by conducting in-depth diagnostics of current operations,
developing specific recommendations for improvement, and supporting PWSA
employees in implementing initiatives aimed at reaching new performance
metrics. The analysis and resulting operational changes helped PWSA reduce its
cost of operations and helped increase the utility’s revenue by resecuring a
large commercial customer. The total effect of these changes is nearly $2.4
million annually. The partnership also reduced customer hold times by 50% and
enabled PWSA to approve an annual budget without the need for a water-rate
increase.

PWSA
provides water and sewer services to more than 300,000 consumers throughout the
city of Pittsburgh and surrounding areas.

Siemens Energy (Munich) received a
contract from Indonesia to deliver a Zimpro wet-air oxidation system. The
technology will be part of a new gas-processing facility in Indonesia, where it
will treat wastewater that is the result of the gas-production process. The
contract was awarded by a consortium consisting of PT Inti Karya Persada Tehnik
(Jakarta, Indonesia) and PT Adhi Karya (Persero) Tbk (Jakarta). As general
contractors, both companies are working together to build the gas-processing
facility for the state-owned Indonesian oil-and-gas PT Pertamina EP.

The Gundih gas-processing plant is under construction in Blora in
Indonesia’s Central Java province. The facility will have a daily
gas-production capacity of 1.4 million m3 (50 million ft3)
after startup at the end of 2013. The wet-air oxidation system will treat a
mixture of alkaline wastewater and wastewater generated during sulfur recovery
by destroying odorous and high chemical oxygen demand pollutants and generating
an effluent that meets Indonesian environmental regulations for discharge.

The City of San Diego (Calif.) Public Utilities Department awarded CH2M Hill (Englewood,
Colo.) a contract to provide optimization consulting services to streamline the
city’s water and wastewater operations. The optimization program will provide a
blend of operations, management, and engineering capabilities to increase
operational efficiencies, reduce costs, and generate additional revenue.

San Diego’s water infrastructure system is one of the largest and most
complex in the U.S. Located in a semiarid desert region with little rainfall,
San Diego imports 90% of its water to meet the needs of 1.3 million people. The
city maintains and operates more than 5311 km (3300 mi) of water lines, 49
water pump stations, 130-plus pressure zones, and more than 984 million L (260
million gal) of potable water storage capacity in a variety of standpipes,
elevated tanks, and concrete and steel reservoirs.

Under the contract, CH2M Hill will conduct a comprehensive operational
optimization study to review and evaluate San Diego’s water and wastewater
facilities and operations to determine if improvements can be made in the areas
of energy utilization, water production and distribution, chemical usage, data
utilization, wastewater solids processing and disposal, operator staffing, and
warehouse practices and procedures. The study findings will be used to produce
implementable recommendations.

Also, CH2M Hill’s joint venture CH2M Beca Limited with Beca (Auckland,
New Zealand), an engineering consultancy, was selected by Watercare Services
Limited (Auckland) as the professional engineering advisor to upgrade the
biological nutrient removal (BNR) system at the Mangere Wastewater Treatment
Plant in Auckland. The water resource recovery facility upgrade will further
improve Auckland’s water quality by reducing the nutrients going into the
Manukau Harbour and increasing the capacity of the existing system that will
help accommodate the city’s growing population.

This project continues CH2M Beca’s role at the Mangere plant and will
involve the design and tender of documentation for a 2 m3/s-capacity
increase using BNR in a four-stage Bardenpho configuration. Subsequent stages
will encompass the site supervision, as well as management of construction
contractor and plant commissioning assistance and operator training. The project is scheduled for handover to Watercare in 2017.

The Water Replenishment District of Southern California (WRD; Lakewood, Calif.) and the
Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County signed a historic 30-year,
recycled-water purchase agreement that will eliminate the need for water from
Northern California and the Colorado River for groundwater recharge.

Historically, WRD has purchased more than 61 billion L (16 billion gal)
of recycled water and 26 billion L (7 billion gal) of imported water annually
for groundwater replenishment. This agreement will enable WRD to offset the
imported water component of its water portfolio with highly treated recycled
water. In total, WRD will use 87 billion
L (23 billion gal) of recycled water annually.
Imported water no longer used by WRD will be conserved and subsequently
become available for other uses throughout the state.

In July, CenterPoint Energy (Houston) rewarded the Blue Lake Wastewater Treatment Plant in
Shakopee, Minn., with a $150,000 rebate for energy savings. The savings stemmed
from a new solids processing facility completed last year. With the help of new
anaerobic digesters to process solids, the plant produces methane biogas for fuel,
replacing most of the need for natural gas from CenterPoint.

The produced biogas fuels a dryer that processes solids into fertilizer
pellets and saves an estimated $500,000 a year that would otherwise be spent on
natural gas. The biogas fuel produced has enough capacity to heat about 900
households.

The $150,000 is a
rebate for natural gas that was saved because the biogas offsets the need for
natural gas, conserving the natural gas and the global-warming emissions that
burning the natural gas would have created.